Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was like woaaaah when I tried to download something and I couldn’t because it was NOT verified by Windows.... I was so confused. But realized I was in S mode. Which is a new thing for me. But I turned it off. So far liking my purchase. Loud for YouTube and music. Good picture quality. Haven’t used the camera yet, probably won’t. But I’d recommend this laptop for the price.

Upon receiving already had purchased a 8gb sdram ddr4 for this laptop, i am thinking of purchasing another 8gb later, to make it a 16gb ram, so far so good, i had already a 2.5 480gb ssd around from building another pc at home, i went ahead and ordered a caddy for laptop to try to mount a 2.5 ssd as second storage drive after completion it did work mounting a second ssd on the empty slot by the bartery and there is a connector for another hdd there. Contrary to other comments and review it can be done. As far as the m.2 i may leave it alone for now as the window drive, will upgrade later, i do have the usb recovery drive to swap the m.2 but that is another project for another day.

Work good and great camera when I use my zoom meeting class

Perfect little laptop! Doesn’t run games but it’ll do anything else!

I never seen a slow laptop like this one in my whole life. Skype is starting last one hour. Every thing is slow about it. Very disappointed.

Purchased this laptop for 8 yr old. Everything was working fine. Setup was easy. My only two complaints with it was that the screen had a glare if we were in a bright room. And I had to constantly clean it because fingerprints were always visible on it. Sorry to say my 8 yr old dropped it after only having it for about a month. Display is damaged. I’m having a hard time contacting HP for help. I’m glad it was inexpensive!

I purchased laptop online and picked up my merchandise curbside on 4/25/20, I began using the laptop daily on 5/4/20 and noticed that several repetitive keys are faded

For an everyday laptop there's nothing not to like. Very lightweight, black plastic case is solid and has nice feel. Keyboard is decent, screen is fine. It's only 3 pounds -- pretty close to an ultrabook type PC at 1/3 of the price. The only catch is, Windows 10 really does not run well on 4GB ram. So I added 8GB more memory for $36 and runs much better. Since it's a new model I couldn't find a hardware diagram, but you have to remove the rubber pads on the back and then you can get to screws and remove the back (6 screws in all, don't miss the 2 at the edge). This MAY not be necessary because Windows should use the SSD as virtual memory. But in my experience system was just stable when memory requirement went up (such as playing videos while leaving web browser up). Maybe with tweaks to virtual memory settings (such as setting aside a fixed 8 or 16 GB on the disk) it would work, but I just decided to add ram. With 12G of ram the machine is stable. Comes with Windows in S mode, which limits you to the Edge browser and apps through the Microsoft store. It's a good idea to keep S mode if that works for you, it is definitely more secure. But if you need to install apps the conventional way, switching out of S mode is easy and fast. This is a fabulously good laptop for under $300. Good job Microsoft and HP.

I am very happy so far with this laptop. The unit itself feels pretty sturdy, the screen is a decent resolution and is clear, and the keyboard is responsive and good for typing. Plus the battery life is very good, and easily gets through my 4 hour workday with constant use, and usually ends up at about 30%-40% battery at the end of the day. It is a very good starting point for most people, and came with very minimal bloatware. Windows 10 itself actually came with more bloatware than the laptop itself. I would, however, not recommend getting a laptop with just 4gb of RAM. As someone who likes to take advantage of multiple tabs and programs, 4gb really isn't very much to work with, and can lead to slowdowns. I installed 16gb of RAM (which was very easy, actually) and am very happy with where I'm at, although I'd say that it might be a bit overkill, and 8gb of RAM should satisfy most basic users. I used these sticks here (https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-8gb-2-4ghz-pc4-19200-ddr4-so-dimm-unbuffered-non-ecc-laptop-memory-black/6346312.p?skuId=6346312), and am liking them so far. You can use other types of RAM, but make sure they are laptop memory. The upgrade was very simple, though I had to look up a video to find all the screws. Two of them are very easily visible on the bottom of the device, but the rest are hidden underneath the silicone rest bars on the bottom of the device. They are easy to peel off, but I'd be careful when removing them, as they are also pretty easy to rip apart (which I did do to the first one I removed.) The method I found that worked best was grabbing the end of the bar and peeling gently until you have enough it to work with, and then taking your other hand and peeling upwards as close to the computer itself as you can. If you can get them both off in one piece, they should be easy enough to put back with the adhesive they come with. But I was also able to restore the ripped one to the device as well with a bit of superglue. After the RAM upgrade, the CPU is probably the weakest link in this laptop, but it still functions admirably, especially for the price point. In the first week or so I was experiencing lots of freezing, and I had almost regretted my purchasing decision, but after some changes it's now under control. First off, I would not recommend installing the antivirus that Best Buy bundles with this laptop (Trend Micro at the time of my purchasing). It's not a bad program, but it is very heavy on CPU usage, and would regularly be using upwards of 70% of my CPU. Uninstalling this program and switching back to Windows Defender immediately saw a huge boost in performance. However, it did come with three copies, so I was able to install it on my phone, which seems to be working nicely. Another thing I'd recommend to boost CPU usage is to go into your startup programs settings and turn off any unnecessary programs. This also helped with performance a lot. Overall, I can't recommend this laptop enough. It's never going to be a powerhouse unless you can somehow replace the CPU, but it is good enough for my needs with using Office and having multiple Firefox tabs open at the same time. Since I got it on sale, I ended up with a laptop with 16gb of ram for only about $330, including the price of the RAM. Try finding a laptop with 16gb of RAM for under $500, or even $700 (hint, you can't.) If you're not scared to crack it open for a very easy upgrade, grab this baby up and get a great deal on a laptop.

Pros: -At this price point, you get a very useable product at a discount -SSD instead of HDD (faster boot-up) -Integrated graphics aren't too bad -Light -Very quiet (mainly because it isn't powerful enough to ramp up your laptop's temperature significantly) Cons: -Small screen (can be a plus depending on what you use it for) -128GB storage pretty much demands cloud storage being utilized for most things (you will need to use the space sparingly if you plan on playing any games on this) -System memory is definitely the bottleneck of this machine. 4GB single-channel RAM makes for limited use for anything but the most basic tasks, you will notice consistent hiccups in performance while multi-tasking Suggestions for the CONSUMER: -Highly suggest purchasing a second 4GB DDR4 RAM stick. This cheap ($20) add-on will make a world of a difference while multi-tasking and makes processes like gaming, productivity and even web-browsing miles more enjoyable.

4th grader doing remote learning required a dedicated device for school work. he has been using tablets and it was limited. shipping was fairly fast and product arrived as expected. this is a simple laptop, perfect for elementary school into junior high. 4gb ram does feel little lagging when trying to do multi tasking, but that's when I use it as I have faster computer and it's relative comparison. The built-in audio/mic is good, however the camera is somewhat disappointing. if you use web cam often, it'll be a definite negative aspect for sure. for us, it wasn't that bad to return this laptop. perhaps we can get separate webcam if it really bothers us. another negative is keyboard is not back lit. again, not a deal breaker item. eventually i will upgrade the ram and it'll help. windows 10 S mode felt limiting. had to change to home mode on day 1. but overall, my kid and I are happy with the laptop. get a wireless mouse as the track pad buttons are little tacky.

Picked this HP laptop on sale ($239) for my daughter in 4th grade to do school work. It has decent specs out of the box: 4gb RAM and 128gb SSD hard drive. The processor is great: AMD Athlon 3050u Silver 2.3GHz with boost up to 3.1GHz. Its very lightweight and attractive jet black with a textured finish. The HDLED screen is very nice for the price of this laptop. WINDOWS 10 in "S" mode comes pre-installed. *I want to let everyone know that this HP laptop does indeed have 2 RAM memory slots (each slot has removable RAM cards) and only ONE slot is being used with a 4gb card. Nothing is soldered in. (from what I was able to find, the total RAM can be upgraded to 16gb: 8gb + 8gb) however, I chose to retain the factory installed 4gb card and just add a 8gb card in the empty slot. Quick and easy job to do. I purchased a Patriot 8gb SODIMM DDR4 2666MHz 260 pin card and it installed easily in the open slot. Total job required removing 6 screws (4 are hidden under rubber strips) and 2 are exposed. Install from start to finish was 15 min. EASY. Basic philips head. The laptop booted up fine and ran very fast. I confirmed the 12gb total RAM by launching task manager and looking at memory performance. Solid cheap $32 upgrade for the 8gb RAM stick. The 128gb SSD hard drive is fine for her now, but it would be very easy to upgrade that as well down the road. The stock 128gb SSD is made by Kingston: series 350DE and HP part # L50361-001. Its held in by a single screw and shape is similar to the RAM stick. So, my overall opinion is this: Its a basic HP laptop with a nice screen and the 128gb SSD is a nice touch (easy to upgrade later) and waaaaay better than the old mechanical hard drives. Its running WINDOWS 10 in "S" mode and that's fine for kids. The 4gb RAM is the glaring weak spot, but with a small screwdriver, 15 min of your time and a $32 new 8gb RAM card installed this laptop becomes a beast. Battery is a Li-ION 3 cell, decent and seems to be fine so far. Again, the biggest issue was the 4gb RAM. Now it has 12gb RAM and it's a huge upgrade.

I got this laptop to use in my craft room. I quickly came to discover that 4GB RAM is not enough to RAM for this computer. I had several hang ups and freezes before I thought maybe adding some RAM would help. I almost returned it, it was that laggy. Trying to run any program + Photoshop? Forget about it! It was almost unusable at times. Using Firefox would consume nearly all the CPU. Finding the right RAM is not an easy task for most folks, so in the hopes of helping others, this is the RAM I bought: Crucial 8GB Single DDR4 2666 MT/s (PC4-21300) SR X8 SODIMM 260-Pin Memory - CT8G4SFS8266. It was $34 on the great website that begins with an 'A'. And it has made all the difference in the world! This laptop has TWO slots for RAM, so I just added the 8BG to the empty slot and now have a total of 12GB. Protip: Google how to open up this laptop before trying to pry it open before you have all the screws out; several of the screws are under the rubber footing on the bottom. Learned that lesson the hard way as I now have some dings and gouges on my laptop. Oops. For the price paid (I got mine for $239 on sale), it's a great laptop. It's not fancy or anything, but for what I need it for, it's perfect. I haven't used the camera, so I can't comment on that, but I'm glad it's included. Screen is nice and bright and a good size for the table I have it on. Very portable, but not so small it's unusable. This is my first laptop with a SSD (solid state drive) and no CR-ROM drive. No problems there! 2 USB ports is all I needed and I'm a happy crafter.

I needed a non-Chromebook laptop for my new online school program. While this laptop has minimal RAM and space, it was priced reasonably and hasn’t given me any issues. However, I did take it out of S Mode to be able to download programs I prefer to use (ie: Google Chrome browser) that weren’t included in Microsoft’s approved software applications. Once taken out of S Mode, you cannot change back. So make sure to have ample virus and malware protection installed.

Great laptop for basic needs! I was debating between this, an HP Chromebook or a MacBook Air, but I’m so happy I went with this HP instead! I use it for my small business, mostly consisting of using Excel, internet browser, and the use of my thermal printer. The only thing that’s weird is the S Mode thing which I had to switch out of because the software for my thermal printer was not compatible to download. Even browsers such as Chrome or Firefox cannot be downloaded unless you switch out. Switching out has not affected the performance in any way for me, and I am honestly very pleased with this purchase. I can literally buy two of these with the money for a MacBook. Totally recommend!

I upgraded the M.2 SSD drive to a kingston 500GB drive and upgraded the RAM to 16GB. The laptop performs as well as my $2k Lenovo and my kids are very happy. I spent $120 additional on my upgrades. Bringing my laptop total to almost $400 but I couldn't find anything decent in that range (*NEW). Overall extremely pleased and my daughter hooks it up to her monitor and uses it like a desktop with her own mouse and keyboard. Her classes are running well, her occasional roblox no issues and overall excellent.

Obviously you aren't going to get a whole lot for this price, but what you do get is a whole lot considering the price. It runs perfectly. The only thing I dislike about this machine is the RAM size. This can be very easily fixed (I mean super easy. Even grandpa could do it.). Just buy another stick of ram from someone like crucial (plug in the model number into their compatible tool if you don't know how to tell) it'll cost about $20 and the performance boost is amazing. You don't need to replace the one in their because there is an open slot for a second stick, so just pop a new one in to increase the ram. (The following suggestion is probably not best for the less tech savvy but isn't too difficult) Alternatively, if you feel a little adventurous you can install Ubuntu to dual boot on the device and keep Windows as well or wipe the whole disk and install Ubuntu. I use Ubuntu as my preferred OS. All the hardware is compatible will the latest OS release. The only thing you will have trouble with is the Wireless network card. You will need to connect the laptop via Ethernet and install the wireless driver from the "software&updates" menu under additional drivers. Be sure to check the allow third party drivers and software (or something along those lines) when doing the install. The main benefit of Ubuntu is how amazingly low resources it needs to work. This leaves more resources to run everything else, creating a more snappy and responsive experience on lower end devices such as this laptop.

Purchased this to use in the summer since I don't have my school laptop. I'm not a fan of larger laptops, so this laptop already met that criteria. It's fairly sturdy, and the plastic doesn't easily bend. It can handles the general web surfing that I do. However, the laptop occasionally freezes up for a second or so, and the CPU stays at 100% multiple times even though I'm only doing light web surfing. Being at this price range, this is something I can live with. Unfortunately the deal breaker here for me is the laptop's audio, it crackles a lot when I play videos with audio. I might be unlucky or something because I returned it and got the same one again hoping that the audio will be different, but to no avail. Hopefully it's just me being unlucky and getting two bad laptops in a row, but that was a deal breaker for me to go look for other laptops. It's a shame since I really like the laptop, too.

I’m impressed with this laptop. I needed an inexpensive laptop to run three primary Software apps for live audio engineering. As a result, I don’t need a large hard drive. For my requirements, this laptop has exceeded my expectations. The processing speed is much quicker than I expected. Startup is very fast and program loading is also very quick. The CPU easily handles my three monitoring apps with ease. I converted from Windows 10 S Mode to Home with no issues in order to download these apps. I’m very happy with the performance to price ratio. I would recommend this for others with more basic requirements.

It is not too small, I was worried about the size, but it is decent. And it can take a bit of your time to set it up, but once is ready, is fast. Good for school and meetings. The integrated camera and microphone has good quality. Up to now, no problems with the battery.